Your development as a facilitator is critical to our students success. We use a phased approach to faculty development. The following information is taken from Palloff and Pratt's book from 2011, The Excellent Online Instructor: Strategies for Professional Development.
A Phased Approach to Online Faculty Development
Sherry, Billig, Tavalin, and Gibson () studied and presented what they termed the technology learning/adoption trajectory model and proposed training strategies that accompanied each phase in the model. They discuss the following phases and strategies:
Stage 1. Teacher as learner: Termed an information gathering stage, instructors are seeking to develop the skills they need in order to perform instructional tasks using technology. Recommended training includes demonstrations of best practices using technology delivered by peers who are already incorporating technology into teaching.
Stage 2. Teacher as adopter: This is an experimental stage in which instructors try out various forms of technology and share their experiences in doing so with a focus on task management. The use of mentors and knowledgeable peers, as well as lab situations, is recommended to support instructors in their experimentation.
Stage 3. Teacher as co-learner: A clear relationship between technology and the delivery of curriculum is forming at this stage. It is at this point that workshops focusing on enhancing instruction through the use of technology are recommended, along with collegial sharing of lesson and assessment ideas. Students can be effectively used as technical assistants in this phase.
Stage 4. Teacher as reaffirmer or rejector: Greater awareness of learning outcomes is developing in this phase, along with the ability to determine the impact of various technological approaches on student learning. Incentive systems work well at this phase, including encouragement to disseminate exemplary student work as examples of the impact of technology on student progress and performance.
Stage 5. Teacher as leader: Experienced instructors are encouraged to expand their roles in this phase to become active researchers and teach new members. Instead of participating in training at this phase, instructors are encouraged to lead workshops and work as mentors.
The goals for our faculty development and mentorship program are:
Attract and retain a high caliber of educators for our distance learning program.
Provide pedagogical support to new faculty
Provide content support
The objectives for our faculty development and mentorship program are:
Have mentees experience learning in an online course.
Explore and integrate various online teaching and learning strategies
Explore and integrate the concept of learning communities in online teaching
Begin planning for the development of the faculty member’s own online course
Apply the concepts of good course development to a course that can be immediately implemented and delivered
Be able to critique the positive elements in courses developed by others as well as make appropriate suggestions for improvement
Integrate good assessment techniques into an online course
(adapted from Palloff & Pratt, 2011)
Palloff and Pratt (2011) also discussed a teacher development program that is based in this phased approach. For the purposes of this course you are considered a novice instructor. However, remember you could be in any of various stages of your development as a faculty member.
Your training program to become a facilitator for our school could look like this.
Face-to-faceworkshop
3 to 6 hours
Planning effective distance learning programs
Faculty leadership
Mentoring for online teaching Getting published
Effective faculty evaluation
Online Training
The online 3-module course you are currently working on is a pre-requiste for this face-to-face workshop. Upon completion of this course, you will receive your invitation to this event.
All
Online seminar
1–2 weeks
This comes directly from the college you will be working for.
Novice/beginner
Online seminar
4–6 weeks
During this 4-6 weeks you will use this wikispace to help you talk about topics surrounding:
Using technology in teaching
Effective online facilitation
Syllabus development for online teaching
Maximizing participation online
Online discussion Assessment
Beginning course design
Your development as an online faculty doesn't end at the end of your online seminar. We use a mentoring program based on the Passages Program from Emory University. But instead of in person meetings, your mentor could be in a different state, or even a different country. Our program is a structured mentoring program. You will be paired with a mentor teacher and you are expected to commit to regular meetings and formulate goals in different areas. Even with an overall structure in place, the program affords each partnership flexibility in choosing how to spend their time and energy to enhance the novice teacher’s career. The mentorship program participants also meet as group periodically for training and informal gatherings focused on career development. Every success discussed create a better future for our faculty and our students body as a whole (Thomas, 2005).
Choosing Mentors
With all our talk about what your mentoring program will be like, lets briefly talk about how your mentors will be selected and trained.
Your mentor will be selected based on their choice to be a mentor as well as their standing within the school. Mentor teachers will be paired with their mentees in their own school or field as much as possible. Mentor teachers are expected to have facilitated at least 10 online courses in the last 2 years with high student survey results. The mentors, like yourselves will be trained on how to mentor new teacher and help them build successful classes. Here is a sample of what their process is for becoming a mentor.
Your development as a facilitator is critical to our students success. We use a phased approach to faculty development. The following information is taken from Palloff and Pratt's book from 2011, The Excellent Online Instructor: Strategies for Professional Development.A Phased Approach to Online Faculty Development
Sherry, Billig, Tavalin, and Gibson () studied and presented what they termed the technology learning/adoption trajectory model and proposed training strategies that accompanied each phase in the model. They discuss the following phases and strategies:The goals for our faculty development and mentorship program are:
The objectives for our faculty development and mentorship program are:
(adapted from Palloff & Pratt, 2011)
Palloff and Pratt (2011) also discussed a teacher development program that is based in this phased approach. For the purposes of this course you are considered a novice instructor. However, remember you could be in any of various stages of your development as a faculty member.
Your training program to become a facilitator for our school could look like this.
Your development as an online faculty doesn't end at the end of your online seminar. We use a mentoring program based on the Passages Program from Emory University. But instead of in person meetings, your mentor could be in a different state, or even a different country. Our program is a structured mentoring program. You will be paired with a mentor teacher and you are expected to commit to regular meetings and formulate goals in different areas. Even with an overall structure in place, the program affords each partnership flexibility in choosing how to spend their time and energy to enhance the novice teacher’s career. The mentorship program participants also meet as group periodically for training and informal gatherings focused on career development. Every success discussed create a better future for our faculty and our students body as a whole (Thomas, 2005).
Choosing Mentors
With all our talk about what your mentoring program will be like, lets briefly talk about how your mentors will be selected and trained.
Your mentor will be selected based on their choice to be a mentor as well as their standing within the school. Mentor teachers will be paired with their mentees in their own school or field as much as possible. Mentor teachers are expected to have facilitated at least 10 online courses in the last 2 years with high student survey results. The mentors, like yourselves will be trained on how to mentor new teacher and help them build successful classes. Here is a sample of what their process is for becoming a mentor.
(Palloff & Pratt, 2011)